Death knell in L.A. Beneath the golden glitter, Tinsel Town spawns sleaze, sickies, psychos, and wiseguys. Ex-cop Fritz Brown, sometime P.I., full-time Beethoven buff, sees it all as he walks the shady side of the streets. Now he’s got a client named Freddy “Fat Dog” Baker, a caddy who flashes too much cash... and a gut feeling that this case could be his last. Arson, pay-offs, and porn are all part of the game. But so is Fat Dog’s foxy cello-playing sister. And soon Brown’s desire to make beautiful music with her threatens to turn his favorite song into a funeral march

From Wilshire to Watts, ambitious rookie Freddy Underhill patrols L.A. looking for glamor and glory. His dreams of being a hotshot California cop are bigger than the bats he makes on his golf game or the busts of the women he picks up. So when a flashy lass he knows from a one-night stand is strangled, Underhill sees his chance to grab headlines with a quick collar. Until the clandestine set-up to catch the killer breaks open a locked door to kinky sex and sleazy secrets — and murder in smog city closes in on both Underhill’s career and his life

Martin Plunkett ha sembrado Estados Unidos con un rastro de muertes. Cuando el FBI consigue darle caza, decide confesar sus crímenes a cambio de que su autobiografía vea la luz. Así, escribe sus memorias mientras cumple las cuatro cadenas perpetuas a que ha sido condenado. Nacido en Los Ángeles en los años cincuenta, su adolescencia es extraña y compleja, hasta el punto de que, en cierto modo, acaba provocando el suicidio de su madre. A raíz de este suceso, queda bajo la tutela de un oficial de policía, de quien aprende justo lo que no debía: el oficio de ladrón. Martin tiene una inteligencia extraordinaria y cierta tendencia al aislamiento, por lo que va construyendo sus obsesiones mientras continúa con los atracos. Tras pasar un año en la cárcel, comete su primer asesinato

Los Ángeles, años cincuenta. Tres hombres se ven atrapados en una tupida red de ambiciones, perversión y mentiras: Danny Upshaw, ayudante del sheriff y punto de mira de intereses ajenos: Mal Considine, fiscal del distrito que intenta promocionarse profesionalmente y poner orden a su vida privada; Meeks, ex narco y hombre fiel a un único dios: el dinero. Por motivos distintos, los tres se verán vinculados a un grupo de comunistas entre los que un sádico asesino ha sembrado el pánico. Por motivos distintos, los tres habrán sacado billete para una pesadilla

What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? “Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing, and sex,” said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett’s style: “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it... He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.” Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories never published before in book form. Included are thirty-six sublimely suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolution of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the golden age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1920s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy. Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett’s 1925 tour de force “The Scorched Face,” in which the disappearance of two sisters leads Hammett’s never-named detective, the Continental Op, straight into a web of sexual blackmail amidst the West Coast elite, to Ed Gorman’s 1992 “The Long Silence After,” a gripping and powerful rendezvous involving a middle class insurance executive, a Chicago streetwalker, and a loaded .38. Other delectable contributions include “Brush Fire” by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raymond Chandler’s “I’ll Be Waiting,” where, for once, the femme fatale is not blond but a redhead, a Ross Macdonald mystery starring Macdonald’s most famous creator, the cryptic Lew Archer, and “The Screen Test of Mike Hammer” by the one and only Mickey Spillane. The hard-boiled cult has more in common with the legendary lawmen of the Wild West than with the gentleman and lady sleuths of traditional drawing room mysteries, and this direct line of descent is on brilliant display in two of the most subtle and tautly written stories in the collection, Elmore Leonard’s “3:10 to Yuma” and John D. MacDonald’s “Nor Iron Bars.” Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block. Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Containing many notable rarities, it celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American literature and film, but how we see our heroes and ourselves

Nocturnes: Short dark riffs, the blues formalized. James Ellroy, described by the Los Angeles Times: “Developing into one of the great American writers.” Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet novels — The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz — an epic pop history of a toxic metropolis. Hollywood Nocturnes: An alternative Ellroy universe, etched less in blood and more in elegiac neon. Dick Contino: Accordion virtuoso, lounge lizard, Red Scare scapegoat. On a greased slide in ’58 L.A.: A show biz fatality begging to happen. Dick Contino’s Blues: Half nocturne, half torch song. A blast back to tailfins, disease-free promiscuity, sex killers, Commie-bashing, publicity kidnaps, and B-movie redemption — an ode to a time when love came cheap. Nocturnes: Noir set to music. James Ellroy: America’s great noir writer. Dick Contino: America’s kingpin accordion player, then and now. The accordion and noir?... Suspend your disbelief. Hollywood Nocturnes: The novella Dick Contino’s Blues, Ellroy’s entire short-story oeuvre, and a few surprises. Dig it, kats and kittens, chix and charlies: This is prime-time Ellroy

Para el teniente David Klein, muertes, palizas y extorsiones sólo son gajes del oficio. Hasta que en otoño de 1958 los federales abren una investigación sobre la corrupción policial y el mismo Klein se convierte en el cetnro de todas las pesquisas y acusaciones. Sin embargo, aunque él haya contribuido a crear ese mundo monstruoso, poblado por la codicia y la ambición, está dispuesto a salir vivo de él a cualquier precio

The movie Janet Maslin of the New York Times calls: "Gangbusters! A shrewd, elegant film with a flawless ensemble cast and style to burn"; L.A. Confidential is an epic crime novel that stands as a steel-edged time capsule-Los Angeles in the 1950s, a remarkable era defined in dark shadings. A horrific mass murder invades the lives of victims and victimizers on both sides of the law-three cops treading quicksand in the middle. Detective Ed Exley wants glory. Haunted by his father's success as a policeman, he will pay any price, break any law to eclipse him. Detective Bud White watched his own father murder his mother-he is now bent on random vengeance, a time bomb with a badge. Celebrity cop Jack Vincennes shakes down movie stars for a scandal magazine. An old secret possesses him-he'll do anything to keep it buried. Three cops in a spiral, a nightmare that tests loyalty and courage, a nightmare that offers no mercy, allows for no survivors. Here is James Ellroy's masterpiece… darkness to haunt you in shades of red, gray, and black

En 1958, cuando James Ellroy tenía diez años, el cuerpo de su madre fue hallado en la cuneta de una carretera, en un pequeño pueblo cerca de Los Ángeles. Nunca se descubrió al asesino y el caso quedó cerrado. Ellroy alcanzó el éxito en su faceta de escritor de novelas tan radicales como provocativas, pero la memoria de la muerte de su madre no dejó de perseguirlo. En esta obra Ellroy da cuenta de la frustrada investigación policial; de la volátil trayectoria que tomó su vida a partir de aquel suceso trágico; de la carrera de un antiguo sheriff de Homicidios del condado de Los Ángeles llamado Bill Stoner; de la investigación que el autor y el propio Stoner emprendieron para identificar, años después, al asesino de su madre.Esta autobiografía de James Ellroy es una historia arrebatadora: sobre la naturaleza del crimen, sobre el mero pestañeo que puede separar la lujuria del impulso asesino; sobre el viaje atrevido y revelador del autor a los rincones más oscuros de su memoria

Enter a world of seedy nightclubs, dangerous, dimly-lit street and cool, wisecracking dicks pitting themselves against armies of ruthless gangsters. This is pulp fiction, a genre spawned amid the disillusionment of post-World War I America — and now reaching new heights of popularity.　 Writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett turned that unique blend of rapid-fire action, violence and cynical humour into an art form that is being recreated by a fresh wave of young writers whose stories have all the drama and atmosphere of their predecessors’.　 This page-turning collection, brought together by a true aficionado of the hardboiled story, includes, of course, Chandler and Hammett, but also Mickey Spillane, Ross MacDonald, Ed McBain and James Hadley Chase from the vintage years and from the current generation James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino, to name just a few of the twenty great writers featured here. Even Stephen King, doyen of the world of horror, has turned his hand to pulp fiction and is represented in this book.　 The world of the hard-drinking, fast-action, apparently indestructible private eye, personified by Chandler’s creation, Philip Marlowe, was never more vibrant. It’s all here, and more, in a book that no fan of the genre can afford to miss

Meet Freddy Otash: corrupt cop turned sleaze hustler, extortionist, pimp, and an actual historical figure who made the 1950s magazine “Confidential” the go-to source for the sins of the rich and famous. In his prime, Freddy raised hell, and in the pages of “Shakedown” he finds himself in purgatory — literally — waiting for a transfer. Will he make it to heaven, or is his fate trending south? Promised redemption if he confesses, Freddy writes a tell-all peopled by Hollywood greats like Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, and Gary Cooper (to name a few), who are up to all sorts of wrong. Threesomes, foursomes, men’s room misadventures — anything goes in this licentious world

The Shroud Shifter speaks: I clipped my self-sharpening, teflon-coated, brushed-steel axe and swung it at her neck. Her head was sheared cleanly off; blood burst from the cavity, her arms and legs twitched spastically, then her whole body crumpled to the floor. The force of my swing spun me around, and for one second my vision eclipsed the entire scene — blood spattered walls, the body shooting an arterial geyser out the neck, the heart still pumping in reflex... Martin Plunkett has struck again

The 2005 edition of The Best American Crime Writing offers the year's most shocking, compelling, and gripping writing about real-life crime, including Peter Landesman's article about female sex slaves (the most requested and widely read New York Times story of 2004), a piece from The New Yorker by Stephen J. Dubner (the coauthor of Freakanomics) about a high-society silver thief, and an extraordinarily memorable "ode to bar fights" written by Jonathan Miles for Men's Journal after he punched an editor at a staff party. But this year's edition includes a bonus – an original essay by James Ellroy detailing his fascination with Joseph Wambaugh and how it fed his obsession with crime – even to the point of selling his own blood to buy Wambaugh's books. Smart, entertaining, and controversial, The Best American Crime Writing is an essential edition to any crime enthusiast's bookshelf

In his introduction to the The Best American Noir of the Century, James Ellroy writes, 'noir is the most scrutinized offshoot of the hard-boiled school of fiction. It's the long drop off the short pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It's the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad.' Offering the best examples of literary sure things gone bad, this collection ensures that nowhere else can readers find a darker, more thorough distillation of American noir fiction. James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, series editor of the annual The Best American Mystery Stories, mined one hundred years of writing - 1910-2010 - to find this treasure trove of thirty-nine stories. From noir's twenties-era infancy come gems like James M. Cain's 'Pastorale,' and its post-war heyday boasts giants like Mickey Spillane and Evan Hunter. Packing an undeniable punch, diverse contemporary incarnations include Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, Dennis Lehane, and William Gay, with many page-turners appearing in the last decade

Los Angeles, 1950. Red crosscurrents: the Commie Scare and a string of brutal mutilation killings. Movieland leftists on a collision course with a grand jury investigating team. A young homicide detective obsessed with capturing a murderer of unparalleled viciousness — even though the price may be horrific self-revelation. Gangsters and cops and fixers and Hollywood grotesques in a noir novel of epic scope and depth. The Big Nowhere is the story of three men caught up in a massive web of ambition, perversion, and deceit. Danny Upshaw is a Sheriff’s deputy stuck with a bunch of snuffs nobody cares about; they’re his chance to make his name as a cop — and to sate his darkest curiosities. Mal Considine is D.A.’s Bureau brass, climbing on the Red Scare bandwagon to advance his career and to gain custody of his adopted son, a child he saved from the horror of postwar Europe. Buzz Meeks — bagman, ex-Narco goon and pimp for Howard Hughes — is fighting Communism for the money. All three men have purchased tickets to a nightmare. The Big Nowhere is dark, brutal, tender and powerful; it is a remarkably vivid portrait of a remarkable time and place. With his best-selling The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy established himself as the modern master of noir fiction; The Big Nowhere establishes him as a major American novelist

The Black Dahlia is a police novel on an epic scale; a classic period piece that provides a startling conclusion to America’s most infamous unsolved murder mystery. Already hailed as a masterpiece, it establishes James Ellroy as this country’s most powerful living writer of noir fiction. On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia, and her murder sparks the greatest manhunt in California history. Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops, friends, and adversaries in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the Dahlia — driven by dark needs to know everything about her life, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl’s twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches — into a region of total madness. With the no-punches-held style that has become the trademark of a James Ellroy novel, this brilliant and savagely original author launches the reader on a roller-coaster ride through the violent world of the ’40s L.A. cop

Featuring the best from the modern masters of detective, intrigue, suspense, and mystery fiction

New Year’s Eve 1941, war has been declared and the Japanese internment is in full swing. Los Angeles is gripped by war fever and racial hatred. Sergeant Dudley Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department is now U.S. Army Captain Smith and a budding war profiteer. He’s shacked up with Claire De Haven in Baja, Mexico, and spends his time sniffing out Fifth Column elements and hunting down a missing Japanese naval attaché. Hideo Ashida is cashing LAPD paychecks and working in the crime lab, but he knows he can’t avoid internment forever. Newly arrived U.S. Navy Lieutenant Joan Conville winds up in jail accused of vehicular homicide, but Captain William H. Parker squashes the charges and puts her on Ashida’s team. Elmer Jackson, who is assigned to the alien squad and to bodyguard Ashida, begins to develop an obsession with Kay Lake, the unconsummated object of Captain Parker’s desire. Now, Conville and Ashida become obsessed with finding the identity of a body discovered in a mudslide. It’s a murder victim linked to an unsolved gold heist from ’31, and they want the gold. And things really heat up when two detectives are found murdered in a notorious dope fiend hang-out

Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns — it’s all in a day’s work for Lieutenant Dave Klein, Los Angeles Police Department. Trained as a lawyer in school, schooled as a strongarm on the street, bought and paid for by the mob, there’s nothing he’s not into and nobody’s better at any of it. But In the fall of 1958, when the Feds announce a full-out investigation into police corruption, everything goes haywire. Suddenly, the game Klein thought he was running has a new set of rules — and they’re not his. He’s been hung out as bait, “a bad cop to draw the heat,” and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins — all of them hell-bent on keeping their own dirty secrets hidden. For Klein, “forty-two and going on dead,” it’s dues time. And it’s Klein who tells his own story — his voice clipped and sharp and as brutal as the events he’s describing — taking us with him on a hellish Journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, greed, and perversion. It’s a world he helped create, but now he’ll do anything to get out of it alive... Fierce, riveting, and honed to a razor-edge, White Jazz is crime fiction at its most shattering, and the most explosive novel yet from James Ellroy

Freddy Otash was the man in the know and the man to know in ’50s L.A. He was a rogue cop, a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp — and, most notably, the head strong-arm goon for Confidential magazine. Confidential presaged the idiot internet — and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink, and the scurrilous skank. It mauled misanthropic movie stars, sex-soiled socialites, and putzo politicians. Mattress Jack Kennedy, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson — Frantic Freddy outed them all. He was the Tattle Tyrant who held Hollywood hostage, and now he’s here to CONFESS. “I’m consumed with candor and wracked with recollection. I’m revitalized and resurgent. My meshugenah march down memory lane begins NOW.” In Freddy’s viciously entertaining voice, Widespread Panic torches 1950s Hollywood to the ground. It’s a blazing revelation of coruscating corruption, pervasive paranoia, and of sin and redemption with nothing in between. Here is James Ellroy in savage quintessence. Freddy Otash confesses — and you are here to read and succumb

Американская мафия 50-х годов переживает тяжелые времена и теряет влияние. В это время набирает силу республика Фиделя Кастро, над которой никак не могут восторжествовать американские силы. Правительство делает ставку на братьев Кеннеди, одаренных молодых политиков. Лишь одна старая и нечистая история, связанная с их отцом, может помешать безукоризненному замыслу. Ситуация усложняется вмешательством самонадеянного, но бесхарактерного агента ФБР, вообразившего, что он сможет в одиночку победить преступность. Именно ему в итоге удается разгадать и сопоставить намерения участников происходящего. Он знает все, но машину уже не остановить. Продажные журналисты, политики, борцы с «красной угрозой», наркобароны и коррумпированные полицейские — все они сплачиваются ради единой цели: сделать одного из членов семьи Кеннеди президентом. Сделать, чтобы после уничтожить

Лос-Анджелес, 1958 год. Главный принцип жизни Дейва Клайна, главы отдела нравов полиции Лос-Анджелеса, – «для достижения своих целей хороши все средства, даже убийство». Но когда Клайну приходится возглавить расследование коррупции в полицейском управлении, он становится наживкой, на которую должна клюнуть крупная рыба: рэкетиры, наркобароны, продажные политики и полицейское начальство. И эти люди пойдут на все, чтобы их секреты умерли вместе с Клайном. Для Клайна наступает время платить по счетам. Чтобы спасти себе жизнь, он должен погрузиться в страшный мир, частью которого он был. Мир большой крови и смертных грехов. Мир-монстр, который он сам создавал. И теперь этот монстр готов уничтожить своего создателя…

Лос-Анджелес, 1950 год. Время красной угрозы коммунизма и кровавых серийных убийств. Время охоты на ведьм в Голливуде: большое жюри расследует подрывную деятельность леваков. Время, когда каждый ловит свой шанс. Помощник шерифа Дэнни Апшо — шанс раскрыть чудовищные преступления и удовлетворить собственное болезненное любопытство. Следователь прокуратуры Мал Консидайн — шанс сделать карьеру и стать опекуном своего приемного сына, которого он спас от ужасов послевоенной Европы. Авантюрист Базз Микс — шанс разбогатеть на борьбе с коммунизмом. Но билет в Город Греха можно купить только в один конец…

«Идеальный» преступник совершает «идеальные» преступления – он не оставляет ни следов, ни улик. Более того – целых двадцать лет ему удается представлять смерть многочисленных жертв как самоубийства или несчастные случаи. Но даже «идеальный» преступник однажды совершает ошибку… И теперь по его следу идет талантливый, обладающий потрясающей интуицией детектив Ллойд Хопкинс. Шаг за шагом он приближается к убийце, чтобы наконец сойтись с ним в последней, смертельной схватке…

Лос-Анджелес, 1953 год. В кафе «Ночная сова» неизвестными хладнокровно расстреляны шесть человек. Расследованием их гибели занимаются трое полицейских: молодой честолюбец Эд Эксли, стремящийся быть достойным славы своего знаменитого отца; безжалостный мститель Бад Уайт, в детстве ставший свидетелем убийства собственной матери; и консультант популярных телесериалов Джек Винсеннс, поставляющий информацию скандальным журналам. Все трое абсолютно непохожи, но их объединяет одно: у каждого из них есть опасные секреты, которые они тщательно охраняют. Сохранить свои тайны и найти убийц невероятно сложно: ведь все трое – участники игры без правил и победителей…

Уорд Литтел, юрист, работающий на ФБР, прибывает в Даллас в день убийства Джона Кеннеди. Его задача — вмешаться в ход расследования и скрыть улики, изобличающие организаторов покушения — людей, связанных с мафией. В этом ему помогает Пит Бондюран, наемный убийца и наркоторговец, участник военных операций ЦРУ на Кубе. Одновременно с ними в Далласе оказывается полицейский Уэйн Тедроу, разыскивающий негра-сутенера, которого ему предложили убить за шесть тысяч долларов. В следующие пять лет эти трое оказываются участниками разнообразных преступных авантюр, включая героиновую торговлю во Вьетнаме, незаконные поставки американского оружия на Кубу, убийство Мартина Лютера Кинга и Роберта Кеннеди, а также сделку между миллиардером Говардом Хьюзом и мафией, предметом которой стал город Лас-Вегас

15 января 1947 года на окраине Лос-Анджелеса найден изуродованный труп молодой женщины. Расследование жестокого убийства Черной Орхидеи, как называют жертву в газетах, поручено двум опытным полицейским — друзьям и соперникам, влюбленным в одну и ту же женщину. Вскоре оба становятся одержимы новым делом: разгадка жизни и смерти Элизабет Шорт становится для них навязчивой идеей. В поисках ответов они должны пройти все круги ада, погрузиться на самое дно послевоенного Голливуда и раскрыть темные бездны человеческой души — в том числе и собственной